Introspection
by Spaceshot
Summary: 'You cannot expect that after such an inconvenient life it will be followed by an easy death - that would appear to demean what we have laboured through.' That was the last thing Spock said to him alone; that was it. - Oneshot about how Kirk may have handled Spock's funeral in Wrath of Khan.


The black case shook. It trembled and it turned Kirk's knees to jell-O. It felt like images...a sense of Spock's movements was jolted in his head. He could imagine that with every shock his hands would tremble, limp at his sides.

He'd see him now, his eyes closed and eyelids giving a slight quiver as it was laid on the long, automatic rails.

Something violently beat against his chest from the inside, throwing itself at his ribs. He couldn't breath for some long minutes, barely listening to himself say the words as he watched Spock leave him for one last time.

Mr Scott broke into a _Amazing Grace _on his bagpipes, but Jim took a heavy, shuddering breath and moved away, pushing past McCoy and not realising he was running until he reached quarters and gasped dryly into voice recognition. Pressing his palm into the tactile entry modem, but suddenly his hand was instead pressed against a gently curving glass.

Spock bumped into it like a trapped animal, as though he could simply walk out of his predicament. A Vulcan salute touched his mind on the other side, the memories blinding him to his immediate surroundings.

'Auu-gh God,' he cried, swaying by into his quarters, chest heaving.

What now?

What the hell now?

Violently his stomach lurched emptying itself, but there wasn't anything there, so he gagged on the bitterness. He fell forward, his jaw cracking into the ground and he felt a little blood, but even as his eyes stared ahead widely; thoughts and memories electrified him. The feeling of Spock against him that first time near the end of their five-year mission.

Or the warmth of his hands pressing into Jim's as he came to in the Med Bay; 'This simple feeling,' he'd said as though it were the most obvious thing.

But the words seemed to fall out of his memory and the bruised and clouded face behind the glass dominated him, the words a relentless onslaught; 'I have and always shall be your-'

Kirk moaned and gasped, his chest flat on the ground and he stared across the floor of his dark chamber.

It felt as though he had been there for days, not seconds, it felt as though - if left for a little longer - he would simply decompose.

Spock gently eased himself forward and then down from his haunches to his backside on the cold ground, radiation still clinging to him; pushing the life out of him.

His eyes shut and all Jim could visualise now was the impact his body would make to the inside of the case when he hit Genesis; his soft, limp body. With a life-time of studying every law of physics known to man the simplest now made him decrepit. He knew that both of Spock's legs would be broken upon impact with the new planet's surface, he would be in pieces, alone and in exile. Alone. It was the most visceral thought to ever cross the Captain's mind.

He didn't care if Spock was dead; he didn't want him alone.

He screamed, writhing in the agony of it, he didn't want to see it anymore, but his mind was playing wicked tricks on him. It was burnt into his eyelids, his eyelashes strokes of agony on his own skin.

'Jim!' feet appeared and revealed Scotty and Sulu at the door, whilst Bones approached quickly, the door shut the other faces out. He gently put a hand around Jim's upper arm, but was pushed off as he hauled the Admiral to his feet.

'Leave me,' he said, eyes looking at the ground. 'Leave me be.'

'Jim, your face,' Bones began, reaching out, his hand briefly brushing by Jim's jaw. The motion intensified the onslaught of pictures.

'GODDAMMIT GET OUT! GET OUT!' he finally yelled his eyes still charcoals with the memories in him.

Bones gave him a single, rapt nod and backed out, eyeing him as though he were a dangerous, trapped animal.

Jim collapsed into the chair and knew he would have to live with this every single day for the rest of his life now. A chill took hold him and he thought about all the passed times.

Every second deviated from being spent with Spock.

This wasn't what you'd like to happen. This was one hell of a story to tell, but it didn't make any fucking sense. Wrapped in diplomatics and philosophy of life it proved love to be the weakest and most fallible of all consequences.

He imagined his own death. What then? They would be washed away with the sands of time; lost.

In 100 years when the training crew aboard now gave up their own grips on life, Spock's heroism would become a distant shimmer, faded into black and Kirk insignificant in their conscience. Then no one would remember their love, it would die with them in its own manner. Fuck the eternal soul; what if there wasn't one? This fear wracked him; what if he never saw Spock again?

The ship seemed to creak around him. What about the hauling mass around him_; home?_

He could see it now, the _Enterprise _being decommissioned and dissembled, no longer working; its parts so well loved to be torn to pieces in a junkyard. Their home would be sold to the masses of dirty, greedy Klingons somewhere away from Federation space.

Sitting at the bed he hung his head.

They were both powdered in the face of the perpetual cycle that life was; for once he wished he had died young, perhaps on a fleeting mission before he could understand the insignificance of everything. A general warmth seemed to slip over him though and he loosened, slumping and staring at his hands where he sat.

Spock tapped him on the shoulder gently, lying lightly beside him. 'Jim?'

'Yes Spock.'

'Though quite illogical; I have come to think that perhaps this entire time - on Earth - we haven't been looking _up _at the stars.'

'Go on.'

'It has occurred to me before, but it would not deviate from any more or less laws to say that we are suspended by gravity looking _down _at the stars.'

He finally turned to meet those bright brown eyes, eyebrows well in place and hair a little tangled. Jim had smiled lightly; 'And what do you conclude from that?'

'Nothing at all - it is an entirely scientifically void consideration - simply a shift in perspective, although it would suggest something about the measure of ourselves agains the universe.'

'I wish times like now they gave you brochures to the after-life like they do to ski resorts.'

Spock had not answered for a while and the Captain had drifted off.

'You cannot expect that after such an inconvenient life it will be followed by an easy death - that would appear to demean what we have laboured through,' he heard through the heat of sleep.

He was slammed into the future and he took a deep breath. That was the last time they had spoken alone.

That was it.


End file.
